Star Wars Rebellion

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Known as Star Wars Supremacy outside the United States--a rather less biased title. A Star Wars Real Time Strategy game in a similar mode to Stars. You control the Rebellion and must overthrow the Empire, or the Empire and must overthrow the Rebellion. In order to balance gameplay the sides are more closely matched than one would expect.

Rebel goals

  1. Capture Palpatine
  2. Capture Vader
  3. Capture Coruscant

Imperial goals

  1. Capture Mon Mothma
  2. Capture Luke
  3. Capture (or destroy) the Rebel base

Special gameplay events include: Luke goes to Dagobah, learns of his heritage, teaches Leia about their family, and the two (along with Chewbacca) rescue Han if he gets captured by bounty hunters.

Tropes used in Star Wars Rebellion include:
  • Anyone Can Die: Anyone except the main characters that is, even if they're on a planet destroyed by the Death Star, they're simply "captured and injured."
  • Awesome but Impractical: The Death Star is a time and resource hog beyond belief and vulnerable to rebel fighters (unless you keep it orbiting a shielded planet). It's the slowest craft in the game and can't participate in battles beyond the occasional blast from the Wave Motion Gun. It's the ultimate planet-conquering weapon, however, and its mere presence makes all planets in the same system more loyal to you without having to fire a show.
  • Black and White Magic: Fits the trope in spirit anyway. The Rebels cannot steal Imperial craft. Nor will anyone defect, though they will sabotage their own missions if you sufficiently kriff it up, like losing two Death Stars or something. The Empire has stronger capital ships, the assassination mission, and starts out with a Jedi Knight and a Jedi Master. The Alliance, by contrast, has stronger starfighters, starts out with only one Force-sensitive (Unlocking Leia's Force-sensitivity is a complicated side quest: Luke has to be on the same planet as Vader, and then has to be on the same planet as Leia. But early on, Luke will inevitably be captured by Vader.), and has a starfighter engineer (Wedge). Also, the Alliance's main characters are constant, while, except for Vader and Palpatine, the Empire's are variably. Differences in ship quality tend to be reduced over time, and all Force-sensitives other than Vader and Palpatine improve their stats easily.
  • Canon Immigrant: Incorporates a lot of characters from the Star Wars Expanded Universe and gives some of them faces for the first time.
  • Competitive Balance: This is in play late in the game, but not as it begins--the Rebels have inferior ships to the Empire and no trained Jedi, while the Empire has two. Later on the Rebels can research larger ships capable of standing toe to toe with the Empire and Luke can become a full Jedi and then find and train others.
  • Disc One Nuke: An escort carrier with five X-wing squadrons and one Y-wing squadron can take down an Imperial Star Destroyer unscathed. Or in fact just about any single ship until TIE Defenders come on the scene. Yeah, the game's that unbalanced.
    • The Empire has the Death Star, but building it takes forever, it's generally a waste of resources, and every Rebel and his grandmother knows how to destroy it.
  • Did Not Do the Research: The planets and sectors are not arranged anything like how they are in any other source. Somewhat justified in that the Expanded Universe was still young and fluctuating when the game was made.
  • Game Mod: There were a few, mostly involving switching out the characters.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: A notable aversion: A-wings cannot do Death Star trench runs. But the game doesn't tell you this.
  • Idiot Ball: If you throw A-wings against a Death Star, this is you. Also if you have a Death Star before getting the TIE Defender, or have any ship in a fleet not fully loaded with starfighters.
  • Magikarp Power: The Alliance starts out with relatively bad ships, but they get better quickly since they start out with...Wedge Antilles, who is now apparently an engineer.
  • No Campaign for the Wicked: Averted, although the Empire has fewer big-name characters and its Evil Counterpart of C-3PO is made up for the game. Inverted in that more of the Rebel ships are made up while almost all of the Imperial ones had previously appeared in other sources.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Death Stars are always vulnerable to a trench run by Rebel starfighters, as in the original film. Unlike the later films, where the Second Death Star was going to have that design flaw corrected if it had ever been completed.